Saturday, July 27, 2013

10 Weeks

Since I always like some good milestones, this week I had the pleasure of two of them: my first (official) visit with my new midwives, and the end of my injectable meds! :) Oh, and a third: I'm apparently showing already.... or at least my bloated belly has taken on the shape of a baby belly.

So Thursday I went in to see my new midwives, and it's just such a difference from everywhere else I've received care. They have a free-standing birth center, and appointments are done in the birthing suites rather than in a regular office environment - and the birthing suites are just beautiful. I kind of want to live there.

I've been there a couple of times before for Bradley reunions and other meet-ups (since this birth center has become quite the hub for crunchy and other natural birth-minded folks in my area), and I was really looking forward to getting to start seeing this group of midwives for my own care. The birth center had just opened the week Josie was born, so it didn't work out with them last time, but I've had other friends deliver with this group of midwives and all reviews have been phenomenal. So I've just been (somewhat) patiently waiting for our chance :)

Anyway, the visit went well - they take a much more holistic approach from what I'm used to with care providers, so they really emphasize the importance of diet, exercise, supplements, etc., to maintain health and stay low risk (and actually get into the details of each). So far I really just need to drastically increase my intake of water, get back to exercising as soon as I feel up to it (the fatigue and my class has been making it difficult so far), and then I'll begin following the diet I did with Josie too (basically, a lot of protein along with the usual recommendations for a healthful diet). They didn't think we'd be able to hear the heartbeat, but since I was so nervous - as usual - that I had lost the baby due to some issues earlier in the week, they thought we might as well try.... and then they were able to find it within 5 minutes :) 

I also get to end my injectable meds tonight. I really could have switched over to non-injectables several weeks ago, but since I had already paid for enough injectable meds to get me through 10 weeks, I figured we might as well stick with the injectables (pun not entirely intended). The bruising hasn't been that bad this time around (with Josie, towards the end it was just shots into bruises and welts every day - not pleasant), but my back's readiness to bleed has been, so I will not miss these daily shots. 

Finally, on Tuesday I noticed what appeared to be a baby bump. Now, I know subsequent pregnancies can start showing earlier, but being barely 9 weeks at the time seemed to be excessive, since the baby isn't even the size of my fist yet. But regardless of what I think, every morning since then I've woken up looking just a touch thicker than usual, and by the end of the day, there is a definite bump. So we'll see how much longer before people start noticing. I didn't really start telling people at work until at least 16 weeks with Josie, and I have the distinct feeling that that won't be possible this time around.

Standard first-thing-in-the-morning comparison shot:
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At the end of the day (whoa). And then, just for fun, sucking in as hard as I can, which is how I'm walking around at work right now :)
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Saturday, July 20, 2013

9 Weeks

This week we were on vacation, and I feel fairly certain that everyone knew what was going on although we probably won't be announcing until after first trimester. I was completely wiped out, so I ended up napping for a couple hours nearly every day when Josie went down for her nap. Josie also slept in until 7:30am just about every day, so we got over an hour extra sleep each night too. I wish I could say that I felt wonderful about all this sleep, but it only upgraded me from slightly delirious to pretty much functional, maybe in part due to the fact that I was sleeping so poorly too. Crazy dreams, waking up in the early hours and then not fully getting back to sleep after that. The days I slept until 5am before waking up for the first time were the highlights.

Besides that, the random bouts of nausea continued, and I was cranky and constantly hungry this week. I do feel (and I think look) a bit thicker this week, but I'm pretty sure that's just because I ate more than usual (and not as healthfully either). And yet I only gained a couple of pounds over this week at the lake - usually it's closer to 10 - so maybe it's not entirely a food belly?

Here's the comparison pictures for this week - again, no 8 week picture because of vacation. We're home now, though, and back to the regularly scheduled programming/picture-taking location :) I'm also blaming my inability to be consistent with the picture fonts on fatigue.

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Wednesday, July 17, 2013

24 Months

Josie is two! Here's a snapshot of Josie at two years old:

Stats: 35" tall, ~30lbs (down to the 90th percentile now for both)

Loves:
  • peanuts
  • popsicles
  • lemons
  • corn on the cob (with butter that she'll lick off first)
  • cuddling
  • reading
  • picking at our moles (...ugh)
  • coloring
  • pretending to make and feed us "soup"
  • storytime (complete with dancing and singing)
  • yelling gibberish
  • making things "sleep"
  • water (drinking it, playing in it, bathing in it, whatever)
  • shrimp
  • berries
Dislikes:
  • sharing (at least with the kids at daycare)
  • being told no (unless we're joking, then it's back to being hilarious)
  • cooked tomatoes
  • her food falling on the floor and us not immediately picking it up for her (she gets fixated and pretty upset about this)
  • dirty hands/feet
Note her dislike list is a bit shorter than her love list - generally, Josie is a happy, funny kid who does occasionally ridiculous things, and sometimes throws a (usually not too impressive) tantrum. 

We had a party the weekend before her birthday, where Josie got all sorts of fun toys and ran around acting silly with family. Her favorites so far seem to be a phone, boat, and drill set. Instead of a cake this year, I made chipwiches for everyone, so this also was one of the few times where we've given her refined sugar. This also served as a good reminder for why we try to avoid that, as Josie got pretty wound up and didn't go to sleep until almost 10pm (about 1.5 hours later than normal), and we all had a rough night, with Ryan and I having troubles falling asleep, and then Josie and I waking up repeatedly throughout the night. The chipwiches were delicious, but we won't be doing that again anytime soon.
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Speaking of food, Josie is getting much better at feeding herself with a spoon (which is so nice that we can actually eat breakfast together now, rather than me feeding her as my own food gets cold), although she's still not that great with a fork. She has also thrown a few tantrums while eating out now (earning her a quick trip outside to calm down again), and went several days without eating much of anything for dinner. We switched to feeding her in courses (vegetables, then meat, then cheese and fruit), switching to the next course as soon as she indicated she was all done, as long as she at least tried everything on her plate, which has helped a lot.

She knows her numbers up to 10 now - she counts stairs and other repetitive things, and can fairly reliably count to 6 at least. She is also learning to associate things with people more, with recognizing "daddy's hat" and calling one of the green trays Ryan always uses "daddy" (close enough!). Pretty much the day she turned two, she also switched to calling me "mommy" more than "mama" - I guess it's because she's a big girl now ;) She knows most of the names of the kids at daycare, and she's getting better with her cousins' names too. She also likes to repeat "holy cow!" after me :)

For the most part, Josie is still mainly just repeating what we ask her to say, or the last word of things we say to her. I think she's just a touch behind in some of her language skills, since she does occasionally use multi-word phrases, but not that often yet. And although she has lots of gibberish to say and will use non-verbal methods to let us know when she wants something, she's not initiating too much conversation quite yet or asking for things using actual words. That said, she did tell me the other day that her water was "dirty" (she had just backwashed yet again), and when I told her it was ok and she could drink it anyway, she said "soap?", which then prompted a pretty funny conversation about why we couldn't put soap in her water, and her insisting on it anyway :)

Her imaginative play has also become more prominent in the last month. She has a toy kitchen that she loves to make us food from, and pour us water to drink. She has also started shutting us out of the play room so she can run around and yell about forks and spoons, and then yell hi to us as we stare at her incredulously. Josie also is far more interested in cars now, and is able to recognize my car and Ryan's, and she likes to climb into her car seat on her own, or climb into the front seat and turn on the turn signals or windshield wipers, and push all the buttons that are in reach.

Miscellaneous cuteness:
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Saturday, July 13, 2013

8 Weeks

Here we are again, and yet I'm much more hopeful this time that this baby will stick. This was our third attempt at baby #2, using our final frozen embryo (from the same batch as Josie came from), which got a score of 100% after thawing and was transferred by my usual doctor (who also did Josie's transfer). So I realize these things don't really predict a positive outcome, but it still made me feel like we might have a better chance with this one. New baby also has measured right on track or a day ahead for both ultrasounds we've had so far, which is also the only time that has happened for me except for Josie. So maybe this will actually be it for us?!
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As far as symptoms go, this little baby is knocking me out.... I've almost felt delirious a few times from being so tired, and have had nausea just about every day for the last two weeks. And I'm sticking with loving the nausea as a reminder of the baby I'm carrying, so long as it doesn't actually turn into vomiting ;) Besides that, lots of crazy, super-involved dreams, interrupted sleep, and some weepiness.

And oddly enough, the tolerance (and then enjoyment) of chocolate I developed while pregnant with Josie (and then continued the last two years) seems to have disappeared, since I think I've had only one piece of candy in the last month (and this, despite a full-to-the-brim bowl of delicious peanut butter and chocolate candies my coworker keeps at the cube across from me). I'm trying to eat healthier, though, since I finally got down to a weight I was good with as a starting point for a pregnancy, but I haven't yet started walking again since the fire upstairs displaced the treadmill a few months back. But just about everything is back in order upstairs now, so as soon as I can get a handle on the homework for the finance class I'm taking (and my fatigue/nausea), then I'll get back to walking again.

I actually have been taking comparison shots since 4 weeks, but since the first several aren't really that exciting (and probably won't be for a while), I've just included my 4 week shot as the "baseline" along with the 7 week picture (we're on vacation now, so no 8 week shot). I appear to have gotten smaller as the weeks went on, but I'm sure that's a factor of the bloat from the medications and my attempt at decent posture :)

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